Mike Brown over-thought the situation. He made the Lakers offense more complex than it needed to be — when you have the Lakers’ firepower you don’t need a hybrid-Princeton offense to score a lot of points and get guys to share the ball. Brown’s new offense had the players thinking, not reacting, the result was a lot of turnovers and a 1-4 start. And Brown getting fired.

The Lakers are 2-0 under interim coach Bernie Bickerstaff in part because he stripped down the offense — Kobe Bryant called it “pick-up basketball” But in that offense the Lakers spaced the floor well, made passes and got good looks. As a team they made good decisions and Bickerstaff praised the Lakers for this after the game. (The other factor for being 2-0 was soft competition.)

For the same reason Bickerstaff had success Mike D’Antoni could work as the new head coach of the Lakers — his offense is not overly complex and is about attacking, spacing and getting easy buckets. It’s about playing on instinct. It’s an offense that is going to be hard to stop because the Lakers key players can all pass. We saw it in the Lakers win over the Kings — Dwight Howard feeling the double team in the post and whipping a pass to Metta World Peace on the weak side for a wide-open corner three. We know Steve Nash is a fit, Kobe Bryant fits in any offense and D’Antoni will love a complete player like Pau Gasol.

The Lakers are going to score a lot of points for Mike D’Antoni. I’m not one who has ever thought D’Antoni’s offense was what was holding him back from winning a ring in Phoenix (an owner not willing to spend big is a larger reason).

But will the Lakers defend well enough under D’Antoni to win a ring?

Because that’s been the real question with the Lakers all along. It doesn’t really matter what offense they run — seven seconds or less, Princeton, triangle, the stuff you junior high coach drew up — they were going to score a lot of points. They are too talented not to. But last season it was their defense that held them back and it was the main question and issue this season.

Mike D’Antoni’s teams have never been great at defense. Well, at least until his final, partial season with the Knicks, but Mike Woodson and Tyson Chandler got all the credit there. His first three seasons in New York the Knicks were never better than 22nd in the league in defensive efficiency (points given up per possession).

His Suns teams were better defensively than they got credit for — because those played at a fast pace they gave up a lot of points per game. But per possession they have up right around the league average those seasons (finishing 13th to 17th).

These Lakers need to be better than average defensively to win it all.

The biggest question for the Lakers become with a defensive force (when healthy) like Dwight Howard in the paint, can D’Anton coax enough defense out of the Lakers to win? A lot of responsibility is going to fall to Howard now, he has to be a force. Is he up to it?

After a failed stint in New York, D’Antoni should be hungry and a little bit desperate to reclaim his status as one of the NBA’s elite coaches. He’s got the team and talent to do that now. He’s got the offense that can get a stacked team a lot of points.

And he might me desperate enough to get them to defend. That is the real key.

Tom Benson, the now 90-year-old owner of the New Orleans Pelicans and the NFL’s Saints, a few years back changed around the succession of control of the team after his passing — his wife Gayle will take control. Rita Benson LeBlanc, Benson’s granddaughter and former handpicked successor, sued saying Benson had been manipulated. After meeting privately with Benson, a judge ruled that while Benson suffered some “cognitive impairment” he was capable of making his own decisions and that Gayle remained the successor.

Benson has been sued multiple times since then, including by former Saints employee Rodney Henry, and the then-89-year-old Benson was deposed in that case last year.

During another set of questions, apparently aimed at establishing how close Benson and Henry had been, Benson was shown a photo of the two men with Pelicans star Anthony Davis.

“Who is this?” Williams asked.

“It’s Rodney and a basketball player,” Benson said. “Oh, hell, I forget his name. Let me — he’s a great player for us. Tell me his name, and I will tell you yes or no.”

When asked “is it Anthony Davis,” Benson said yes. The man is 90, I’m not sure that we should expect much. He had the foresight to bring in people to run his businesses — including his sports teams — and set up a line of succession for when he does pass. Smart moves.

Would Benson’s mental state impact potential changes coming to the Pelicans? Probably not. New Orleans’ GM Dell Demps bet big on going big in a league trending smaller, pairing Davis and DeMarcus Cousins. If that doesn’t work out, plenty of people around the league expect a house cleaning on the basketball side with the Pelicans. Benson’s mental state, whatever it may be, does not impact that.

The deposition leak came from an anonymous source (and anonymous email account, the paper verified the document before publishing). Who leaked it? It may be nearly impossible to find out, but only one side benefits from all this becoming public. And it’s not Benson.

A few years back in Philadelphia, the athletic K.J. McDaniels was a highlight factory and looked like a guy who could develop into a role player on the wing in the NBA.

Except, he never actually developed. Houston gave him a chance (three years at a total of $10 million), and it didn’t work out, then last season Brooklyn had him for 20 games, but they decided to move on.

Now Toronto is going to give him a chance, reports Adrian Wojnarowski of ESPN.

McDaniels’ agent later confirmed the news. This is a training camp, make-good contract for McDaniels. But unlike a lot of those contracts being handed out around this time, there is space on the Raptors roster for a player or two.

Before the KJ McDaniels partial, Toronto had $116.6M in guaranteed salary with 13 players + the $100K partial of Alfonzo McKinnie.

McDaniels will compete with Alfonzo McKinnie, Kennedy Meeks, and Kyle Wiltjer for one of the final roster spots in Toronto. Of that group, I’d most likely want to keep McDaniels because of the shot blocking and his potential — but his outside shot has to improve.

The Raptors can carry 15 on the roster and very possibly will until at least Jan. 10, which is the date these partially guaranteed deals become fully guaranteed for the season. Toronto is flirting with the tax line, and ownership is not going to want to pay the tax for this team, so if they do carry 15 they likely will cut it to 14 by that date.

The #DriveByDunkChallenge has been a fun distraction this summer. If you don’t know what it is, it essentially involves NBA players jumping out of their cars to dunk on regular folks on community basketball hoops.

There are still some serious doubts about whether the Celtics will be able to unseat the Cleveland Cavaliers in the Eastern Conference, but perhaps they won’t need to wait for long. Rumors are starting to trickle in about LeBron James leaving Ohio, so maybe by the time we are used to seeing Hayward in Celtics green next season they will have less competition out east.